The construction and home improvement arts frequently need custom colored sealants for the improved aesthetic appearance of a wide array of projects. Common substrates where precisely color-matched caulks are needed and desired include: painted surfaces, stained surfaces, counter tops, wall paper, pre-colored siding materials, brick, stone, tile, bath and kitchen fixtures, flooring, etc. While some factory-tinted, non-custom colored caulks are available in the trade (with white being the overwhelmingly dominant color), most such colors of caulk do not match the substrates they are applied to very well.
At least one company has provided custom color-matching of individual containers of caulk. However, the custom color-matching has only been done by the company itself and only at its factory. Accordingly, such a custom-coloring service only works when: 1) the consumer or contractor is willing or able to wait several days or weeks for color submittals and then delivery from the factory; 2) the consumer is willing to purchase a relatively large volume of custom-colored caulk; and 3) the consumer is willing to pay a very high price for such factory-made custom colors of caulk.
Consumers and contractors have not been able to go to a local paint store and conveniently purchase quantities of paint or stain and custom tinted containers of sealant at the same time. In particular, the long-standing and unmet need in the market has centered around the ability to: custom tint small or large quantities of cartridges or squeeze tubes of sealant at a time; acquire custom tinted sealant at a low-to-moderate cost; and custom tint sealant without waiting for extended periods of time. To date, these aggregate criteria have been heretofore unavailable.
Some of the key difficulties that have prevented the resolution of such problems in the prior art have centered on several issues. For example, the high viscosity of typical sealant products has made it very difficult or impossible to easily and uniformly mix liquid or dry colorants throughout the sealant. In contrast with this problem, adding and mixing liquid or dry colorants into products with lower viscosities, such as latex paint, has been relatively easy. The basic elongated geometry of standard sealant containers, which produces a high aspect-ratio container, presents another difficulty to overcome. Colorants that are introduced into one end of such elongated containers are difficult to uniformly distribute throughout the entire length of the containers. Moreover, most systems require that the containers of sealant be mixed one at a time, which can waste valuable time while attempting to complete jobs.
Several approaches have either been proposed or commercially attempted previously to allegedly allow for an easy, fast, convenient, and inexpensive method for the custom-coloring of individual containers of caulk at or near the location in the field where the caulk is to be used. While some of the approaches taken have delivered a low level of partial success at in-the-field custom coloring of caulk in individual rigid caulk cartridges, none have provided the needed ease of mixing and dispensing, economy, speed, and ability to simultaneously mix several containers of sealant at once. Moreover, none of the prior attempts have made it possible to custom tint small or large numbers of flexible squeeze tubes of caulk; leaving a great unmet need in the art.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/053,865, entitled “System and Method of Providing Individual Quantities of Custom Colored Sealing Compound,” to which this application claims priority, teaches an elegant solution that includes individual quantities of a sealant base, colorant, and sealant thickener. The base is provided in a dispensing container. When the user is ready to make and use the custom colored sealant, the user adds the colorant until the desired color is attained. Then the thickener is added and the solution, after additional agitation of the dispensing container, is ready to use. However, the colorant and thickener add volume to the original volume of sealant base. Where a significant headspace is provided to accept volumes of colorant and thickener at a point of use, the sealant base can oxidize or coalesce on the sides of the container during long periods of heated storage and develop a skin. This skin is not desirable as it does not adequately mix with either the colorant or the thickener. Accordingly, the skin is later expelled from the dispensing container, uncolored and of the wrong consistency, while the user applies the sealant. This creates waste and time delays as the user is forced to remove the bead of sealant where the skin was expelled and reapply the bead.